A bogus treatment that doesn't work in people is being used on animals too

There is very little evidence that homeopathic medicine can
prevent or treat infectious diseases in farm animals, according
to a comprehensive review published this week in the journal Veterinary Record.

Organic farmers around the world have started using homeopathic
medicine on their livestock as a natural alternative to
antibiotics.

The alternative medicine works on the theory that "like cures
like," meaning an ailment can allegedly be cured by giving
the patient a very diluted amount of a natural substance that
would cause the same symptoms.

For example, the homeopathic "treatment" for an inflamed udder in
cows is belladonna, an extract of the poisonous deadly nightshade
plant.

The new review assessed 48 studies published between 1981 and
2014 on the effectiveness of homeopathy in cattle, pigs, and
poultry. While 22 of them showed no medicinal benefit to
homeopathic treatments, 26 appeared to suggest that the
treatments were superior to a placebo, or sugar pill, treatment.

The problem with those 26 studies was that none of them were able
to be replicated (or repeated with similar results) by an
independent research team, something that's considered a
gold-standard of health research.

Researchers cannot recommend the use of homeopathy

In the new review, potential conflicts of interest, low sample
size, selective reporting, and bias were also found in the
majority of the trials. These are other tricks that scientists
aren't supposed to get away with, and why there are very few
homeopathic research papers in respected journals such as
Science, Nature, and The Lancet.

"A certain remedy which proved efficacious in a scientific trial
may not be effective under farm conditions," the authors said in a statement. "The current
evidence of studies providing evidence in favor of homeopathy
lacks reproducibility and therefore cannot claim to have
sufficient prognostic validity."

Farmers first turned to homeopathy because of the overuse of
antibiotics in livestock. Diseases spread very quickly through
livestock, and often farmers simply add antibiotics to animals'
food on the off-chance they are already sick. However,
this is incredibly dangerous in the long run and has led to
antibiotic resistance.

A certain level of drug-resistant bacteria lives everywhere, but
the non-resistant strains and other bacteria keep it in check. If
all competition is suddenly wiped out, these resistant strains
can thrive and then farmers are in real trouble when it comes to
getting treatment for their animals.

It's a good idea to find an alternative therapy and limit the use
of antibiotics in farming — but homeopathy is not the answer.